“And what can I do?” said Peter, sympathetically, if very much at sea.

“Missy wants to see you before she goes.  It’s only a child’s wish, sir, and you needn’t trouble about it.  But I had to promise her I’d come and ask you.  I hope it’s no offence?”

“No.”  Peter rose, and, passing to the next room, took his hat, and the two went into the street together.

“What is the trouble?” asked Peter, as they walked.

“We don’t know, sir.  They were all took yesterday, and two are dead already.”  The man wiped the tears from his eyes with his shirtsleeve, smearing the red brick dust with which it was powdered, over his face.

“You’ve had a doctor?”

“Not till this morning.  We didn’t think it was bad at first.”

“What is your name?”

“Blackett, sir—­Jim Blackett.”

Peter began to see daylight.  He remembered both a Sally and Matilda Blackett.—­That was probably “Missy.”

A walk of six blocks transferred them to the centre of the tenement district.  Two flights of stairs brought them to the Blackett’s rooms.  On the table of the first, which was evidently used both as a kitchen and sitting-room, already lay a coffin containing a seven-year-old girl.  Candles burned at the four corners, adding to the bad air and heat.  In the room beyond, in bed, with a tired-looking woman tending her, lay a child of five.  Wan and pale as well could be, with perspiration standing in great drops on the poor little hot forehead, the hand of death, as it so often does, had put something into the face never there before.

“Oh, Mister Peter,” the child said, on catching sight of him, “I said you’d come.”

Peter took his handkerchief and wiped the little head.  Then he took a newspaper, lying on a chair, twisted it into a rude fan, and began fanning the child as he sat on the bed.

“What did you want me for?” he asked.

“Won’t you tell me the story you read from the book?  The one about the little girl who went to the country, and was given a live dove and real flowers.”

Peter began telling the story as well as he could remember it, but it was never finished.  For while he talked another little girl went to the country, a far country, from which there is no return—­and a very ordinary little story ended abruptly.

The father and mother took the death very calmly.  Peter asked them a few questions, and found that there were three other children, the eldest of whom was an errand boy, and therefore away.  The others, twin babies, had been cared for by a woman on the next floor.  He asked about money, and found that they had not enough to pay the whole expenses of the double funeral.

“But the undertaker says he’ll do it handsome, and will let the part I haven’t money for, run, me paying it off in weekly payments,” the man explained, when Peter expressed some surprise at the evident needless expense they were entailing on themselves.